Oatmeal questions

Oatmeal absorbs water. How does this effect the curing and soapmaking process?

Has anyone made oatmeal in a thick paste using some of the water for mixing with the lye and then accounting that in their recipe?

I want to use oatmeal in a batch but do not want to make a bar that exfoliates. Was also thinking of making oat flour in my grain mill and adding that at trace but thought it may mess up the water absorbtion/curing process.

Thanks

If you don't want exfoliation then use colloidal oatmeal. You can get it at the dollar store by the bath items. Its a very fine oatmeal powder. Add it to your oils and stick blend well and soap as usual.

Forgot to add you can make it yourself in a coffee grinder. Just grind it really really well until a fine powder.

i made an oat soap 2 weeks ago using rolled oats that i mashed up myself. i mashed them using the 'bowl and blade' attachment that came with my stickblender, so it was not as fine as flour. i mixed my oils and lye as usual, then just added in the oats and stickblended until i reached trace. i must admit i was a little concerned that the oats would absorb the water and make things go wonky, but it didn't seem to happen. everything progressed as it usually does, i didn't observe anything out of the ordinary, and 2 weeks later my soap seems just fine. i added the oats at a rate of 10% of the weight of the oils.

i have read of people here cooking oats in water, straining off the oats and then using that water as their lye water, however i have not tried it myself.

the very first time i made oat soap, i soaked the rolled oats in water, and then added the hydrated oats to my soap mixture. it came out fine. however based on my most recent experience, in the future i will just add the oats in dry. unless of course i observe something wrong with my most recent oat soap when the time comes to use it!

i am also pretty sure i have read of people here using oat flour in their soap with no issues. hopefully they will add to this thread for you.

When I make my honey & oats bar, I usually add my ground oats to a little olive oil I reserved along with some honey and my clove eo. Now, I will say that I make this as HP and add the oats at the very end. I have yet to try it with cp, but when I do, I will probably do the same. I figure that I make a slurry with my clays so it distributes evenly.. so, why not with the oats Just my 2 cents.

I put mine through the coffee grinder and then I do add water or milk to it to make a slurry and then add it to the oils prior to the lye...

I also use finely ground oatmeal, and I have found (the hard way) that I need o increase my water amount to almost full water, otherwise the soap feels crumbly. This is because oatmeal ends up absorbing some of the soaping water. I add it as a powder at trace, and if I use a bit more water than in my other recipes it all works out well (no crumbling). I think that mixing the powdered oats with a little water would have the same effect.

Again.. just my 2 cents...

The reason I use some olive oil for the oat slurry, is two fold.

1. The oats don't soak up all the oils or water out of my batch making it dry and crumbly.

2. When I've seen some people use water for the slurry, it tends to cause DOS earlier than usual. I figure, if the oats have soaked up oil instead, they won't hold water. And the oil seems to make the oats feel a bit sifter on the skin after the cure I can also discount water if I want.

Just some thoughts. It's fun to see what happens when you experiment!

I have put oats in both CP and HP soaps. For both I put the oats through the coffee grinder. I just added at trace with the CP and at the end of cooking with the CP. I have loved the results with both. But the hubby has asked if we could get them into smaller little pieces. So from now on I will do the coffee grinder and then sift through a VERY fine seive.

The CP was Oatmeal & Chamomile with some Grapefruit EO. The HP I call Cinnamon Oatmeal. Part of the oils were an infusion I did with Cinnamon mostly and just a pinch of clove and nutmeg. After done cooking, when I added the oats, I also added a bit of the spices from the infusion and a few drops of Cinnamon EO (STRONG stuff!!!)

unclejonssoap said:

Again.. just my 2 cents...

The reason I use some olive oil for the oat slurry, is two fold.

1. The oats don't soak up all the oils or water out of my batch making it dry and crumbly.

2. When I've seen some people use water for the slurry, it tends to cause DOS earlier than usual. I figure, if the oats have soaked up oil instead, they won't hold water. And the oil seems to make the oats feel a bit sifter on the skin after the cure I can also discount water if I want.

Just some thoughts. It's fun to see what happens when you experiment!

Click to expand...

This is basically the same thing that I do when I use rolled oats in CP. I chop 'em up a bit with a knife, add some OO to them to keep 'em from being absorbent, and add them at trace.

I've used ground oatmeal a few times. I ground it fairly fine but not super fine. I added the dry ground oatmeal at trace, along with some warm honey. I usually do a milk, honey, oatmeal bar, with my water at about 38%. I used dried milk, added to part of my water and added at trace also. I do gel, and yes, the soap is a bit brownish, but the color is fine. I have also added a shake of cinnamon. My bars are not crumbly. I am using the last little chip of a bar I made about 2 yrs ago. It's time to make more. I did not grind the oats up enough on that one and the bars were much scratchier than I wanted. I don't have any of the bars left from the batches I have made since then. Hopefully this weekend I will get a batch made.